Episodes - Afterlife: Beaus' Helmet

The character in the helmet with the breathing tube attachment, right of centre, is Beaus, played by Sam Mansary.

That helmet would return to the series in a variety of guises over the years - but before it featured in Doctor Who it could be seen in one of the Pathfinders serials.

The series began life as Target Luna, which co-starred Michael Craze (companion Ben Jackson) and was broadcast on ITV in April 1960. Other Doctor Who connections were Sydney Newman, who produced it, and Malcolm Hulke, who co-wrote it and the subsequent serials with Eric Paice.

It led to a trilogy comprising Pathfinders in Space (September 1960), Pathfinders to Mars (Dec 1960 - January 1961), and Pathfinders to Venus (March 1961).

The star was Gerald Flood, who voiced Kamelion (and appeared as 'King John' in The King's Demons), and George Coulouris (Arbitan in The Keys of Marinus) featured in the Mars and Venus serials as Harcourt Brown.

Newman's involvement leads us to view this series as very much a direct ancestor to Doctor Who. The stories feature characters similar to the first TARDIS team, with Harcourt Brown as the crotchety and at times untrustworthy older figure, with clean cut adult hero figures and younger characters as you "need a kid - to get into trouble".

Our distinctive helmet first appeared in Pathfinders to Mars (above).

When Beaus was next seen, his helmet had been given a makeover. It had lost its aerial-like attachment and been painted black, though the breathing attachment was still present. He first appears in this guise in The Day of Armageddon and, presumably, in later episodes for which we sadly have no visual record.

The helmet reappeared in Doctor Who, still with the aperture for the breathing tube, in two consecutive stories in 1973 - Frontier in Space and Planet of the Daleks. In the first of these we saw it being worn by the Third Doctor on the two occasions when he embarked on hazardous space walks - firstly to escape captivity on the Master's stolen prison ship, and later to repair General Williams' craft as it approached the Ogron planet.

Having featured in the sixth and final instalment of Frontier in Space, it was seen again just one week later in the opening episode of Planet of the Daleks. With a quick paint job from silver to white, our helmet was being worn by the deceased Thal commander in his crashed spaceship on Spiridon.

Our last sighting in Doctor Who was in 1975, when four of the helmets featured in The Android Invasion, worn by the white-suited Mechanics. On this occasion, they were fitted with new darkened visors, to conceal their true robotic nature.